Thursday, March 28, 2013

Theme: One International Relations or Many? Multiple Worlds, Multiple Crises

Wednesday 18 – Saturday 21 September 2013

Warsaw, Poland

Organised by the ECPR Standing Group on International Relations and EISA in cooperation with the Institute of International Relations, University of Warsaw and the Polish Association for International Studies.

This panel indicates and explains frameworks and/or paradigms between International Relations and Islam.

Chair:Prof. Dr. Maurits S. Berger, LLMis the Professor of Islam in the
contemporary West and the Sultan of Oman Chair for Oriental Studies of the
Institute for Religious Studies, Faculty of Humanities, Leiden University. He
is also a Senior Research Associate at the Netherlands Institute of
International Relations 'Clingendael'.

Discussant:Prof. Dr. Mohammed Ayoob is the University Distinguished Professor of International
Relations at Michigan State University.

Paper Presenters:

International
Relations Theory in Islam: The Need for a more Cohesive Approach

Dr. Mohammad Abu Ghazleh (Arab Academy, UAE)

Recent events have demonstrated that one of the most
important fields of study today is the Islamic perspective of international
politics and Muslim/Non Muslim relations. Over the span of time, various
schools of jurisprudence have emerged, each with its own interpretation and
application of Sharia regarding this issue. Consequently, Muslim scholars have
developed different and sometimes contradictory opinions about the organizing
principle of foreign relations in Islam. Traditionalists believe that foreign
relations in Islam originally depend on the attitude of non-Muslim
groups/societies or states toward Islam and Muslims. Therefore, the foundation
of foreign relations in Islam is fight. In contrast, other jurists whom
referred to as non-traditionalists, argue that the origin of foreign relations
in Islam is peace, simply because the Qurān explicitly states that “there is no
compulsion in religion,” (2: 256). This contradiction creates a dilemma in
Islamic jurisprudence: If Islam is a religion of peace as majority of Muslim
scholars and jurists argue, then how one can understand the Qurānic invitation
to spread Islam by wisdom and beautiful preaching, as clearly stated in chapter
16, verse 125, and by force (means Jihad) if absolutely necessary as stated in chapter
9, verse 5. The purpose of this paper is to rethink international relations
theory in Islam through examining traditional theory which has been most
influential in explaining foreign relations in Islam and incorporating the
various opinions developed by opponents of traditionalism into a more cohesive
approach as an alternative. Taking into account critics directed to
traditionalism and based on the various explanations of the related Quranic
verses, the study incorporated non-traditional opinions into a more cohesive
approach called “pacifism”. This approach regards peace as the organizing
principle of foreign relations in Islam, limits the use of force into
self-defense and views the world as one integrated part within which peoples
from different religious and cultural backgrounds should coexist and cooperate.

Constructing
an Islamic Theory of IR: the Case of Yusuf al-Qaradawi

Prof. Dr. Rodolfo Ragionieri (University of Sassari,
Italy)

In the last twenty-five years the issue of Islam,
international relations and IR theory has arisen in more than one context: the
Gulf crisis (1990-91) and its management in the following decade, the attitude
of Muslim countries with respect to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and
diplomatic process, the Twin towers attack and the rise of jihadist movements,
the “Arab spring” and the electoral success of Islamic movements in Tunisia and
Egypt. However, and notwithstanding many and different stances with respect to
international politics, it is not at all clear whether an “Islamic” theoretical
– descriptive and prescriptive – approach to IR has been developed. Attempts in
this direction were for example outlined by Sayyid Qutb in "World peace
and Islam" (1968) and "Signposts" and proposed by Boutaleb (1995).
This paper wants to focus mainly on Yusuf al-Qaradawi's contribution, drawing
on some writings from his tremendous amount of books. I shall not only deal
with his recent doctrine of jihad (Fiqh al-Jihad, 2009), but also with issues
such as the relation of Islamic movements to nationalism, the place of umma in
international politics and the reasons of the incapability of Muslims to unite.
The objective is to evaluate whether from Qaradawi's thought we can draw a
consistent descriptive and prescriptive theory of international politics, and
its relations to other similar endeavors in 20th century Islamic thought.

The
Minaret vs. the Ivory Tower: Re-Reading Western IR Theory through an Islamic
Episteme

Dr. Naveed Sheikh (Keele University, UK)

While much scholarly attention has in recent decades been
placed on situating religion in general, and Islam in particular, into
Western-dominated IR theory--invariably as an attempt to tame the analytically
unspeakable and transform Geisteswissenschaft to Socialwissenschaft--little has
sofar been said in terms of Islam's own normativity in relation to established
IR paradigms. The present paper seeks to answer the question of how Islam, qua
ethico-nomocentric ideational form, would read the state of art in contemporary
IR theory. Drawing on Islam's own intellectual history pertaining to the
questions of power, rights and statecraft--from the Constitution of the Medinan
Prophetocracy to the meditations of Abbasid jurists on the nature of
politics---but tempered also by that Islamic orthopraxy of which Islamic
politics is an extension, the paper provides a critical inquiry into both the
ontology and epistemology of Realism and other schools of contemporary IR
theory from an Islamicate position. What is at stake in this examination is
whether Islam, as a theologically anchored Weltanschauung, provides a
fundamentally dissident discourse about the nature of international relations
relative to the assumptions implicit in leading IR theories, or whether Islamic
normativity, just like Islamist politics, is co-optable in relation to
post-Westphalian paradigms of world politics. The answer to this question has
implications not only for the intellectual debates surrounding late-modernity's
hybrid social forms but also for the broader question of regional and indeed
world order in an age characterized by the political ascendancy of Islam.

"Islam"
and the Problem of Meta-Narratives in IR - A Critical Perspective on Research
beyond the West

Jan Wilkens is a

PhD candidate and researcher in the Project “Constitutionalism Unbound – Developing triangulation for International Relations” at the University of Hamburg, Germany.

“Islam” in particular as well as “the MENA region” more
generally continue to be research objects that are often reflected upon in the
light of specific grand narratives. “Orientalism”, “Clash of Civilisations”,
and the “Arab Spring” are not only indicative of the ambiguous position of
“Islam” in varying discourses but also shows its particular relevance within IR
due to its meaning in the global realm. Does the requirement to develop an
Islamic or Middle Eastern IR theory logically follow? This paper argues that
such an endeavour would rather reinforce meta-theoretical narratives and
eventually perpetuate Middle Eastern exceptionalism. Instead, this paper seeks
to contribute to critical IR theory which accounts for the ‘situatedness’ of
meaning that shapes social practices in a particular context. Further, in an
increasingly globalised world that harbours more and more constitutionalised
structures on a global scale, the question of legitimacy has to be
substantially addressed. Thus, the paper proceeds in three steps: First, it
critically assesses predominant IR theories (tacitly) working with normative
assumptions, e.g the Westphalian system, and thus producing positivistic
scholarship based upon “Western principles”. Second, it will be shown that a
turn to reflexive scholarship and interpretive methods in IR not only allow to
better assess the diverse practices that are related to “Islam” in different
contexts but also constitute the basis to critically approach the question of
legitimacy. Third, the discourses during the Syrian uprising will empirically
highlight the theoretical claim.

“The
Parting of the Ways”: A Qutbian Approach to International Relations

In the last chapter of his book Social Justice in Islam,
Sayyid Qutb asked about the direction the world was going, and wished to go,
after two world wars. He also considered that the real struggle was between
Islam on the one hand and the combined camps of Communist Russia (Soviet Union)
and the West (Europe and America) on the other. From Qutb’s point of view,
Islam was the true power that opposed the strength of the materialistic
philosophy and possessed a universal theory of life which could be offered to
mankind, a theory whose aims were a complete mutual help among all men and a
true mutual responsibility in society. Sixty years after the first edition of
his seminal work, the world is a different place with the Soviet Union no
longer in place, the Arab world going through profound changes, the West
becoming parochial, and the Rest asserting itself. Using Sayyid Qutb’s
political theory, this paper will try to assess how a new, and different,
International Relations practice could become viable and surpass an
anachronistic world order established after the end of the 1939-1945 war.